Kavli Affiliate: Joel E. Moore
| First 5 Authors: Rabindranath Bag, Sijie Xu, Nicholas E. Sherman, Lalit Yadav, Alexander I. Kolesnikov
| Summary:
The emergence of a quantum spin liquid (QSL), a state of matter that can
result when electron spins are highly correlated but do not become ordered, has
been the subject of a considerable body of research in condensed matter
physics. Spin liquid states have been proposed as hosts for high-temperature
superconductivity and can host topological properties with potential
applications in quantum information science. The excitations of most quantum
spin liquids are not conventional spin waves but rather quasiparticles known as
spinons, whose existence is well established experimentally only in
one-dimensional systems; the unambiguous experimental realization of QSL
behavior in higher dimensions remains challenging. Here, we investigate the
novel compound YbZn2GaO5, which hosts an ideal triangular lattice of effective
spin-1/2 moments with no detectable inherent chemical disorder. Thermodynamic
and inelastic neutron scattering measurements performed on high-quality single
crystal samples of YbZn2GaO5 exclude the possibility of long-range magnetic
ordering down to 0.06 K, demonstrate a quadratic power law for the specific
heat and reveal a continuum of magnetic excitations in parts of the Brillouin
zone. Both low-temperature thermodynamics and inelastic neutron scattering
spectra suggest that YbZn2GaO5 is a U(1) Dirac QSL with spinon excitations
concentrated at certain points in the Brillouin zone. We advanced these results
by performing additional specific heat measurements under finite fields,
further confirming the theoretical expectations for a Dirac QSL on the
triangular lattice of YbZn2GaO5.
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